Tuesday

On Friday, March 13, as Eliot Elementary School staff watched students board buses to go home for the weekend, second-grade teacher Ann Shisler said, “I had an awful feeling in my stomach.”

On Sunday, staff learned the school would be closed, likely for the rest of the year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I was very sad not to have had an opportunity to say goodbye,” Shisler said.

Reading specialist Joanne Hoerth added, “There was no closure.”

SAD 35 Superintendent John Caverly said distance learning was up and running March 18. “Our staff has been incredible, the parents have been incredible,” he said, but added “I’d like to have the kids back tomorrow.”

Marshwood Middle School Principal Anthony Bourbon said remote learning has been the most unique aspect of his teaching career and tested educators’ abilities.

“To do this we talked about how things were done with previous prolonged student absences and with teachers taking long-distance classes. A lot is trial by error.”

Unlike in the upper grades, elementary school teachers had little experience with online learning tools.

“We were literally building the airplane while we were flying it and had no blueprints,” said Eliot Elementary School Principal Maureen Goering.

The state gave districts leeway in establishing online teaching structure, yet Goering likened it to “juggling Jello in the dark.”

Goering has been at Eliot Elementary for 13 years. Her staff numbers 60 with teachers, specialists and education technologists.

For a regular last day of school, the staff cheers the buses as they leave. Goering said she does not remember what they did that last day in March.

Teachers were called back to the school for that Saturday and Sunday.

“Seems like 10 years ago,” Goering said.

They came up with a plan and had workdays Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday, they were teaching students online, at first for two weeks.

“That morphed to an extension, then more extensions,” Goering said.

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Asked how students were adjusting, guidance counselor Bess Kiernan said, “They are going to remember this time traumatically or that they had ice cream for dinner. Parents have to put aside their own worry and angst.

“Kids are far more perceptive than parents give them credit for. If there is stress in the home, kids pick up on that. Behavior and readiness are impacted.”

Second-grade teacher Kelly Middleton said the challenge is to turn teaching units done in person into remote learning.

“We are reinventing everything we are teaching,” she said. “The digital format does not lend itself to the elementary age.”

Caverly agreed. “You can’t take the classroom environment and shove it into a virtual one.”

Each week, teachers make up packets of materials for projects, which parents pick up at the school.

Middleton said with her 17 students, teaching is one-on-one and she communicates with the parents. “For a second-grader to send an email, you have to think of spelling and everything.”

Kiernan agreed: “We are teaching the parents as well as the kids.”

Hoerth said interaction in school is more equitable. With some families in crisis now it’s hard for teachers to navigate. Kiernan said some families are overwhelmed.

“No parents were expected to do home-schooling overnight,” Goering said.

The school helps with parents self-designing schedules, making lists of “have to’s and “want to’s” and games like “Math Bingo.”

“In the first week, people were gung-ho, excited,” Goering said. “Then there was the fatigue factor, frustration, also with the staff. Now, there is a re-boot and people are bouncing back. Everyone is sharing photographs of their home offices, even decorating them with travel posters.”

Some of Goering’s meetings with parents include students. She said the rolls have been reversed, with parents giving progress reports and teachers listening. She has had direct contact with some students, often participating in class sessions, and tutored one student on internet use.

Kiernan said her job has turned into sharing information with parents and staff within grade levels and across grade levels.

Shisler said students from second grade up take laptops home. Caverly said SAD 35 supplied Chromebooks to students who needed them and Wi-Fi hot spots to families that lacked internet access.

“On several Google Chats, teachers said they have had to purchase faster internet packages, spending hundreds of dollars for virtual teaching,” she said.

Second-grade teacher Diane Reppucci said to cross the technology gap she hand-writes letters to her students, photographs and emails them. Students reply with their own hand-written emailed letters and photos.

Middleton said teachers create online albums with student work and photos, shared on a closed network. Art and music teachers are making videos and having read-aloud sessions. On Fridays, the staff creates birthday videos for kids having birthdays that week.

Hoerth said teaching-from-home days are longer. “The emails don’t stop.”

Goering said she thought she had full calendar before the school closure. “Now I am working 60 hours a week at least. It’s remarkable. I’m so aware how much business gets done checking classrooms. Now, everything has to be scheduled.”

Last Wednesday, she was on the phone or in Hangout meetings from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

She also meets with teachers in teams and with special education specialists and education technologists. Seventeen meetings a week, she said.

Reppucci said teachers are finding new ways to teach. For a unit on local history, classes usually visit the District 8 one-room schoolhouse. With that not possible, she found a videographer to create a virtual tour of the schoolhouse.

Most teachers have their own children at home.

Kiernan lives in York with children in second and third grades. “Their teachers are teaching me so I can teach them,” she said.

Reppucci of Eliot has twins in high school and a daughter attending Sacred Heart University but at home. She said her girls are self-sufficient.

Hoerth of South Berwick has a houseful with children in fifth and ninth grades, a senior in high school and one in college. Asked if there are enough computers at home, she said, yes, but the Wi-Fi is strained.

Asked if there is a “virtual teachers’ room” to socialize, several teachers said, “There is no time.”

Goering said she will reflect on the closure with the distance of time.

“Overall, it has worked so much better than I ever anticipated,” she said. “Teachers are wired to connect with kids. It feels wrong not to be in the classroom. It’s harder to generate energy without getting to see their faces.

SAD 35 will have no public graduations for high school or middle school, and Eliot Elementary School will not have its third-grade departure celebration.

Bourbon, the middle school principal, said for an end-of-year celebration staff is thinking of live-streaming events and postponing the annual eight-grade social until August.

“There is nothing like having kids in the school building,” he said. “We miss them dearly.”

For high school seniors, Caverly hopes things will ease up by June. “The end of school makes kids come back together, they have an appreciation for each other.”

Goering said her staff is working on plans for a social-distancing celebration for third graders. For them, moving up to fourth grade at Great Works School in South Berwick marks the start of a new chapter.

School ends for students June 5, but to make up for snow days, teachers will continue another four days in professional development.

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